Litigation

On February 27, 2019, the MacArthur Justice Center obtained a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in Garza v. Idaho. In an opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court recognized that a criminal defendant has the constitutional right to an appeal where his defense attorney improperly forfeited it, and that this right...

At every stage in the litigation against that ban (which the President had often characterized as the “Muslim Ban”) the MacArthur Justice Center ensured that judges had before them a full record of President Trump’s hatred of people of the Muslim faith, his open desire to curtail their rights, and his specific, sustained promise to inhibit their entry to the United States.

Corey Williams was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder as an intellectually disabled 16-year old child, and spent 20 years in Louisiana prison for a crime that he did not commit. We represented Mr. Williams in a petition for certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court and obtained his immediate release from prison through a settlement with the State of Louisiana.

The MacArthur Justice Center filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Louisiana death-row inmate Rogers Lacaze, challenging his conviction based on serious issues of juror misconduct and judicial bias. Our brief laid out the split among the circuit courts and state courts of highest resort on these issues and urged the...

Shawn Davis was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime he committed soon after his sixteenth birthday. We argue in the Supreme Court of the United States that Mr. Davis should be resentenced to life in prison—but with the possibility of parole—because every juvenile, even those convicted of serious...

A police corporal shot Amy Hughes while Ms. Hughes stood in her front yard. There was evidence in the case that at the moment the corporal shot Ms. Hughes, she was standing stationary in her yard, five to six feet away from her friend, that the two women were conversing, and that Hughes appeared calm...

Richard Jordan was first convicted and sentenced to death for capital murder in 1976. He has thus spent over 41 years incarcerated for the same crime. The initial judgment against him was vacated because Mississippi followed a form of capital murder proceeding held invalid by the Supreme Court in 1976. He was convicted and sentenced...

The right to a public trial is fundamental to our constitutional system. It’s a right that belongs to the public itself, protected by the First Amendment, and to a criminal defendant, protected by the Sixth Amendment. Given the importance of the public trial right, it’s no surprise that years ago the Supreme Court held that...

In this case, the en banc Seventh held, over the dissent of three judges, that a mere parking infraction justifies a pretextual search. The dissenting judges warned that the decision gives police the power to seize people for “parking while black” and that “the police tactics here would never be tolerated in more affluent neighborhoods.” The MacArthur Justice Center is challenging the decision in the United States Supreme Court.

Isaiah was a 17-year-old Black teen, naked, unarmed and clearly in the throes of a mental health crisis, when Edmond, Oklahoma police officer Denton Scherman shot him four times, killing him. In the civil suit brought by Isaiah’s family, Officer Scherman raised the defense of qualified immunity, while allows a police officer who violates a...